Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Fire Temple

No one knows for sure how many Zoroastrians remain in Iran -- anywhere from 24,000 to 60,000 and perhaps only 100,000 left in the world. But it has strong roots here; whether the Persian Empire was technically Zoroastrian is apparently not all that clear, but they definitely worshipped Ahura Mazda, the divine spirit of the Zoroastrians.

This is the fire temple in Yazd. Although the building has all the exotic charm of a library in Southern California (it was built in the 1930's), the carefully tended fire here has been burning since 470 A.D.